Welcome everyone to season 26. We are going to kick off with the much talked about ‘death of a recurring character who is voiced by an actor who won an Emmy for the character but it’s not anyone important blah blah blah’ episode for which we have all been waiting. Also some other things are going to happen. I can’t decide what thing I care less about, but that’s because they are all equally meaningless to me.

Also tonight is the Family Guy / Simpsons Crossover, which is technically a Family Guy episode, so I am not obligated to write anything about it here.

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70 Responses to “Sunday Preview: Clown in the Dumps”

Also, I’m calling it. Krusty retires… Then his father dies and, from beyond the grave, convinces him to un-retire. Let’s see if the writing on Zombie Simpsons has become so bad that even anonymous, half-asleep internet commentators can now predict its narrative arcs.

Also, wasn’t there a similar bit in a recent American Dad episode of Roger being offended by his own roast? That one had a well-done, memorable sight gag of Roger crying what appeared to be tears of joy under his sunglasses through the whole thing and only at the end revealed to have severely bloodshot eyes from welling sadness and humiliation.

Will ZS deliver something equally as memorable? As is we all didn’t know the answer to that…

Only watched up to the death and couldn’t watch anymore. Very lame episode. Boring roast, absolute cardboard character and plot progression, and the death happens 3 minutes in and 30 seconds after he’s introduced…couldn’t watch more past that.

In case no one already guessed this, it was Krustofsky who died. A particularly unmemorable death at that while he had something like 3 lines before kicking the bucket. At least not worth hyping the episode.

However, the “couch gag” (if it can be called that) was as usual 10x more creative than the actual episode and clearly done by outside animators. Though the thought of the show going on for 100,000 episodes is an….unsettling one.

The couch gag fucking sucked. It was that fucking shit from Rejected shit an idiot once created while on pot, and now just like Justin Bieber and Martin Garrix has become a hit. Except the Simpsons done it worse because there was just some 3 minutes unwatchable shit.

The Family Guy ep should’ve started with Peter coming out to the audience and saying: “We were supposed to do a crossover, but there is no crossing over something that already doesn’t exist” And then white fucking screen for 22 minutes.

The couch gag was overlong, definitely. It could have been half as long and lost nothing.

I still thought it was an well executed in showing the series devolving further as a program, less as entertainment and more as a vaguely familiar husk of badly done one-liners and solely propped up by a brand name and cross-marketing with merchandise, devoid of anything that made the show worth watching in its heyday.

Much like the current Zombie Simpsons…except the animation appeared to have improved.

I spied Moe, Patty and Selma at the Rabbi’s funeral, and Lenny and Carl at the reception. Why were those people there? Were they friends with the Rabbi? Why am I even asking since this is Zombie Simpsons?

what do you krusty’s dad was a huge influence on all of those characters. krusty’s dad was a hugely significant character in simpssons history and was loved and respected by many sprangfield residents. these are the ones that loved him the most. jeez louise, pay better attention next time dum-dum.

Oh, I honestly don’t recall any of them interacting with Krusty or his father, so I didn’t see reason for them to be at the funeral, but I might be wrong. I’ll have to look it up really, because I don’t remember the Rabbi being an influence on these people :) Sorry

He just dies while talking to Krusty and after saying “…but your comedy? I find it, eh..” Coulda been a heart attack, but it’s kept in a vague sense “of old age.” Krusty discovers he’s dead, then cut to the funeral.

Zombie Simpsons is ratings-baiting trash.
Let’s kill off a minor character from a decade ago.
And crossovers, lots of crossovers nobody wanted!
How about a character comes out of the closet?
Did someone say celebrity guest voices?
What if it turns out the last several years were all a dream?
It’s gonna be a cromulent season sure to embiggen the fanbase.

Yeah, it would be nice to wake up and learn that year is 1965 and that we’re undercover detectives on the hot rod circuit. But nope, the past fifteen or so years of this miserable show have been just as enjoyable as as waking up as a hideous, drunken wreck whose mouth tastes like an ashtray and burping up cigarette butts in the process.

Okay, and about the crossover… It finished off anything remaining of The Simpsons for me. Putting cardboards into Family Guy so that their characters can go crazy on these, well, it happened. A big win for Family Guy though, but even their sucky way is still sucky (in a different kinda way).

Good to see you again Stan, the other regulars on here to, anyway well said.

Also the crossover was interesting but the IGN article on it said it best (also I posted on there under 4thcoming with my Spock profile pic and there are still people that think… The Simpsons is still great).

Al Jean? Anyway I am still working on the great mystery of why SNPP stopped episode capsules mid season 13. It might have go do with Al, trolls, quality of the show, network execs, Fox, payoffs, lawsuits and… Cheese pizza.

I believe SNPP gave up episode capsules simply because there’s nothing worthy to note about them.

Oh talk is so cheap, it’s so easy to say that Simpsons post-2002 were of the same quality as the show during the 90s. Hell you can say it’s better if you wanted. But to actually spend hours compiling a guide and noting every detail? Yeah no Zombie Simpson supporter bothers to do that and for obvious reason.

Al Jean is a narcissist who thinks he is above criticism. He’s even trying to gaslight people into believing the superior quality of pre-2000 Simpsons is just 90s fanboy nostalgia. The best thing about The Simpsons Guy was that he had nothing to do with it.

Wow, I was actually impressed by the crossover episode. While it’s certainly damning with faint praise, I thought it was the best thing either show has done in quite a while. Not a classic or any such hyperbole, but a pretty solid block of entertainment for what it was. Certainly better than the Lego episode which had similar hype surrounding it.

The writing was certainly an improvement over the ZS fare we’ve been getting–decent, clever jokes with actual timing, a plot that actually progressed throughout and had good pay-off gags, even the fake emotional bits were a cut above the usual ZS offerings.

I am not a huge Family Guy fan by any means, but this was certainly better than it had any right to be. The animation was also better than either show has had for quite a while.

Am I crazy? Has watching ZS and contemporary Family Guy the past few years affect my judgement?

So you’re saying that pile of garbage was better than the Lego episode? Phew, you just saved me 22 minutes.
Seriously, this crossover looked like FG parasiting on ZS. The Simpsons characters were shallow and pedantic (so to quote heheh), i.e. they felt even more zombie than in their respective shows. Homer who does stupid things only because Peter asks him to, the Meg good at sax plot that doesn’t amount to anything at all, the way Bart is suddenly disgusted with Stewie torturing his foes (we’re talking about the same Bart who once dreamed of getting Skinner cut in half by a giant ant, remember?), very cardboard Marge only having time to turn from Lois to Brian and back… Sigh, it was a Family Guy “Road to Springfield” setting, otherwise speaking. With predominating FG humor and very cheap gags.
I’m going to be honest. The Simpsons Movie was better. Period.

While the crossover sounds awful I disagree that it was out of character for Bart Simpson to protest Principal Skinner being tortured. Dreaming of a giant Ant murdering Skinner is just that, a day dream. And just because Bart dreamed of being reincarnated as a Butterfly to burn the school down doesn’t mean he wanted to be an arsonist.

Bart Simpson is not an psychopath, he’s bratty kid who loves getting into trouble.

Well, tying some of Bart’s enemies up in the garage isn’t psychopathic yet, if Stewie were to say something like “Okay, now we take out their retinas” and start a drill in his hand, then I’d see Bart protesting. But his “Later, dude” seemed much like Zombie Milhouse’s “Friendship over” remark back from 2011 to me, especially when followed by Nelson punching Bart in the stomach.

I thought there were enough clever jokes to justify watching the crossover. I liked the digs at the idea of the crossover; the digs at both shows’ flaws and laziness; Homer not understanding Family Guy cutaway gags; Peter and Homer’s lines about jumping Springfield Gorge; the cameos from Bob Belcher and Roger; and the similar Simpsons/FG characters meeting each other in the courthouse (James Woods and the two mayors especially). I also liked the “as long as there’s half an hour of crap between us” line, which certainly applied to Brooklyn 99’s episode. Unfortunately they still had to shit on Meg, even though the shock value on that has long worn off.

I watched both episodes with a friend who hasn’t watched either show in years, and he laughed more at FG while barely mustering a laugh for ZS, which he thought was lame.

The courthouse scene was bad. Why were there Quahog residents in Springfield? Is this a jab at ZS always putting not belonging characters in similar locations? If so, then okay, the joke could’ve passed (but still needed better explanation). Otherwise, Fred Flintstone definitely should NOT have been made a judge (you could’ve seated him in the audience and say something like “Copyright infringement? Bah, I lost that case a long time ago!”), the two James Woods must’ve been the only trope to use here, because yes, this was both funny and made sense regarding the plot. Also, the Cool Aid guy joke was funny at the end.

If you’re going to have the Griffins meet the Simpsons, may as well have the secondary characters from both shows interact in some way. The courthouse scene was an extended jab at how similar some of the characters on both shows are.

Fred Flintstone was the judge because he’s an old school cartoon dad, similar to Homer and Peter, who himself was an imitation of Jackie Gleason from The Honeymooners, in keeping with the theme of inspired by/ripped off. See the Modern Family/All In the Family joke at the beginning that also ties into it.

Yes, it also goes back to to a joke that stuck with Seth MacFarlane about 10 years ago in which Peter presented as “Plagiarismo.” in a freeze-frame gag. The crossover was a good way for the Family Guy universe to directly confront that. Direct comparisons between the two shows and their secondary characters was unavoidable and the court scene was a fun way of doing that in a way that made sense.

I believe Seth also once mentioned that the similarities between all “old sea captain” stock characters were unavoidable because they all pretty much sound alike.

The Flintstones bit made sense I agree because it was the undisputed grandaddy of the animated family sitcom. Classic Simpsons occasionally joked on similarities between Fred and Homer.

My favorite courtroom bit has to have been the two James Woods characters talking to each other, openly admitting that not even the idea of an animated guest appearance of James Woods in an animated sitcom was an original idea.

And speaking of an unoriginal concept, the courtroom scene was awfully similar to “The Day the Violence Died”, wasn’t it? Though that focused more on how some of the Simpsons characters resembled caricatures of old celebrities.

Okay, maybe I’m that “realism over comedy” guy, but I really don’t like it when the plot stops making sense only for some overly debated internet topics to be clarified in a TV show (for that matter, TV and internet should’ve even mix, because what reason is there to even watch TV anymore when you can have YouTube and let it all out in the comments?). Comedy is comedy when it’s still bound by realistic rules (see my James Woods example above). Have the court take session in Quahog and a) you could’ve joked about Simpsons characters randomly appearing in the audience because it’s the Simpsons; b) FG characters appearing there would’ve made sense. But anyway, what’s done is done…
I still enjoyed the crossover far more than ZS premiere, for certain. So yes, Mr. MacFarlane, thank you for the usual entertainment of just above stand-up level (if we HAVE to go that low, of course).

I just watched the crossover, it was pretty bad. The only jokes I laughed at were the meta-jokes, and about 20 B-plots were developed and dropped. Plus the fight scene at the end just kept going and going…

I still think a Compare and Contrast would be interesting though, even if it was techincally a Family Guy episode.

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